LibrarianInBlack: Textcasting: the new revolution

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May 22, 2006

Textcasting: the new revolution

Okay, so...just as an experiment, I asked a friend who's not-so-tech-savvy if she knew what RSS was. She said no. I asked if she knew what podcasting was. She said yes. I said...huh? (Well, I actually furrowed my brow and made several non-word sputtering noises before the "huh" crept out). So I asked another non-tech-savvy friend the same questions. Same result. Again....meow? What?

To me, RSS is hugely more useful than podcasting (sorry Greg). I mean, without RSS, there would be no podcast-mania. Podcasting uses RSS. So why is this so? RSS suffers from bad naming...an identity crisis..no one knows what it is. The name certainly doesn't tell you.

Enter a story I saw about Slate.com starting a service to deliver its news stories in text-format via RSS. And they're calling it text-casting. What they're doing is embedding the text in a 15-minute audio file. No real audio, just silence. But the file's description field contains the full text. Brilliant!

What's more billiant is the word text-casting. I hereby proclaim that we should all stop calling text-based RSS by the sad name of RSS, and switch to textcast. Right now. I'm serious. It says what RSS does, what it is, and how it works. Let's do it. Textcast.

May 22, 2006 | Permalink

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Textcasting: the new revolution:

» Changing Our Language from the goblin in the library
"Textcasting" is the new "RSS feeds." Sounds good. Count me in.... [Read More]

Tracked on May 23, 2006 9:23:53 AM

» Very smart ideaout with RSS, in with textcasting from Vox's bookshelf
I tend to watch the blog of the LibrarianInBlack, mostly becauseI like books, and shes one of the most interesting librarians in the blogosphereand today she came up with one of the best ideas Ive read in a long long time. S... [Read More]

Tracked on May 23, 2006 10:52:14 AM

» Textcasting : podcast for text from Library clips
Wow, the other day I just posted on an idea like podcasting but for text, and now its a reality, its called textcasting. Basically, you download an RSS feed to your iPod (or whatever), but instead of listening you read. This is cheaper... [Read More]

Tracked on May 29, 2006 6:54:42 AM

» Textcasting - iPod hack or new name for RSS? from scientaestubique
Textcasting is the latest member of the 'casting family. Slate has announced they are now providing textcast audio files with embedded text. I'm trying this tomorrow morning on my iPod Nano, not sure if it'll display on such a little [Read More]

Tracked on May 30, 2006 8:15:22 AM

» Textcasting : la bonne idée from affordance.info
Puisque tout le monde de plus en plus de monde sait désormais ce qu'est le podcasting et puisque c'est toujours long et délicat d'expliquer simplement ce que sont les fils RSS, leur syndication, leur agrégation ... appelons cela du textcasting. [Read More]

Tracked on May 30, 2006 2:07:09 PM

Tracked on Jun 1, 2006 7:49:18 AM

Tracked on Jun 1, 2006 7:53:55 AM

Tracked on Jun 3, 2006 7:05:01 AM

Comments

I just blogged about this concept last week..what a great idea, instantly download text.
Here's my post:
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2006/05/21/podcast-text/
Here's my new post:
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2006/05/29/textcasting-podcast-for-text/

Posted by: John Tropea | May29, 2006

Yes Greg. You put it much more eloquently than I did. And I know you're not a podcasting evangelist...not saying that at all. Just thought you'd take issue with my value judgment. Anyway...there is a lot of misunderstanding about what podcasting actually is, but most people understand that it means audio delivered in a cool way. That's better than people's understanding of RSS technology, which generally elicits a "durf, whassdat?" Even though podcasting relies inherently on RSS, I'd be willing to bet that a good number of podcast subscribers don't really understand RSS. And that's okay. As long as they're using the technology, I don't care if they know the right name or how it works. My suggestion is re-naming RSS something that actually makes a wee bit o' sense...

Posted by: Sarah Houghton (LiB) | May23, 2006

Excellent suggestion, LIB. We ran into this once when I neglected to correct a question before our usability folks asked our faculty if they would be interested in RSS. Yep, you guessed it, they didn't know what we were talking about. However, if we had merely said "would you be interested in having news items or just-published articles on your topic come up on the screen of this finding tool?" they would have been all over it. We techies must stop using technical terms with civilians when plain English will do nicely, thank you very much.

Another technique, of course, is what you suggest -- pile on to what they already understand. Either way, if we want them to "get it" we have to meet them at least halfway.

Posted by: Roy Tennant | May23, 2006

Although I totally agree that textcasting is a perfectly evocative and preferable term, I must take issue with the comparison of podcasting to RSS. Podcasting is RSS! It's not that dude sitting in his basement playing cover songs, although that is a wonderful result of the technology.

I think what you are arguing is that the syndication of text is of greater inherent value than the syndication of audio. And I can totally go along with that. I don't think there's any doubt that I have more stake in my text feeds than my audio feeds.

I sent a fairly long message to the Bibliocasting listserv today disavowing any role as a podcasting evangelist. I think people see my blog and assume that I think podcasting is the new magic wand that will make all other information needs disappear. (I know you're not trying to imply that.)

And from my limited perspective, anyone who claims to know podcasting, but not RSS, doesn't really know either.

Posted by: Greg | May22, 2006

That's a really really great term! I'll be doing (yet another) training session on new technologies/web 2.0/ library 2.0 in June, and might see if that term helps people understand it better! I also recently heard something (can't remember where, it was on a podcast, maybe?) where the speaker said blogs and wikis were about creating The Content, RSS was about *getting* the content, which I thought was a nice way of putting it.

Posted by: CW | May22, 2006

I do like that and mebbe that's just the hook RSS needs.

Speaking of Slate's podcasts, you need to hear their "special report" on Brangelina's baby. :-)

Posted by: Paul Mills | May22, 2006

You are assuming, though, that they actually *do* know what podcasting is - a lot of people (including some of those who offer 'podcasts') seem to define it as 'downloading an audio file from the web'.

But point taken - I'm willing to bet that far more people have heard of podcasting than of RSS, even if they are somewhat shaky about the definitions.

As for 'textcast', I prefer 'webfeed'. I think.

Posted by: Simon | May22, 2006